Lifespan Development Exam 1

Vocabulary-style study flashcards for Chapters 1 through 4 of Lifespan Development (HDFS 1403).

WEIRD samples

Research samples from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic societies, which make up about 96% of psychology journal participants but only 12% of the world's population.

Phylogenetic development

The development and evolutionary history of a species across evolutionary time.

Ontogenetic development

The development of an individual organism across its own lifespan.

Cultural intelligence hypothesis

The hypothesis that humans evolved specialized social-cognitive skills for learning from each other, demonstrated when human children far outperformed chimpanzees and orangutans on social cognition tasks despite equal physical cognition performance.

Over-imitation

The tendency of young human children to copy even pointless or inefficient steps of a demonstrated action, which allows cultural knowledge to accumulate across generations.

Erikson's psychosocial theory

A developmental theory proposing eight stages across the full lifespan, each defined by a specific crisis to resolve.

Proximal processes

Regular, increasingly complex, reciprocal interactions in an individual's immediate environment that serve as the primary engines of development in Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model.

Case study

An in-depth research report focused on a single individual.

Cross-sectional design

A research design comparing individuals of different ages at a single point in time, which can confound age differences with cohort effects.

Longitudinal design

A research design that tracks the same group of individuals over a period of time, separating age effects from cohort effects.

Third-variable problem

A core limitation of correlational research where an unmeasured variable causes changes in both observed variables, preventing causal conclusions.

Reliability

The degree of consistency of a measure across repeated measurements.

Validity

The extent to which a test or instrument measures what it claims to measure.

Genotype

An individual's complete set of inherited genes.

Phenotype

An individual's actual observable physical, physiological, and behavioral characteristics.

Alleles

Alternative forms or variants of a gene located at the same position on a chromosome.

Polygenic

Inheritance of traits that are influenced by the interaction of multiple genes along with environmental factors.

Concordance rate

The probability or percentage that if one twin exhibits a trait, the other twin will also exhibit that trait.

Reaction range

The range of possible phenotypic outcomes that a single genotype can express depending on environmental influences.

PKU (Phenylketonuria)

A genetic condition demonstrating genotype-by-environment interaction where the same genotype leads to severe intellectual disability on a typical diet, but typical development on a low-phenylalanine diet.

Niche-picking

The tendency of individuals to actively seek out and select environments that align with their genetically influenced dispositions.

Epigenetics

Changes in gene expression or function without any modification or change to the underlying DNA sequence.

Germinal period

The first prenatal period from conception to roughly two weeks, marked by rapid cell division and implantation in the uterine wall.

Embryonic period

The prenatal period from weeks 3 through 8, characterized by the initial formation of major organs and body systems from three germ layers.

Fetal period

The prenatal period from week 9 until birth, focused on the maturation and growth of established body structures.

Teratogen

Any environmental agent, toxin, infection, or drug that causes harm to prenatal development.

Thalidomide

A drug safe for adults that demonstrated the timing principle of teratogens by causing specific physical limb malformations depending on the exact week of embryonic exposure.

Project Ice Storm

A natural experiment on prenatal stress following a 1998 storm in Quebec, showing that objective hardship predicted lower cognitive and language outcomes in offspring at age five and a half.

Braxton Hicks contractions

Irregular false labor contractions that lessen or ease with rest.

Cesarean section

A surgical delivery method in which the fetus is removed through medical incisions in the mother's abdomen and uterus.

Doula

A trained birth supporter who is neither hospital staff nor a family member, whose continuous presence significantly reduces cesareans and shortens labor.

Kangaroo mother care

An intervention for low-birth-weight infants involving continuous skin-to-skin contact, which significantly reduces 28-day infant mortality.

Apgar scale

A rapid assessment scale measuring color, pulse, reflex irritability, muscle activity, and respiration at 1 and 5 minutes after birth.

Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS)

A 20-to-30-minute behavioral evaluation of a newborn's individual behavioral profile, reflexes, and responses.

Low birth weight

A birth weight of less than 2,500 grams ($5.5$\text{ lb}).

Preterm birth

An infant born prior to 37 weeks of gestational age.

Small-for-date

An infant weighing significantly less than normal for their specific gestational age.

Moro reflex

A neonatal reflex in response to a loss of support or sudden sound, in which the baby arches its back, flings its arms outward, and pulls them back toward the body.

Babinski reflex

A reflex where a newborn's toes fan out when the sole of the foot is stroked, which is typical in infants but indicates neurological damage in adults.

PROBIT trial

A cluster-randomized trial in Belarus that evaluated breastfeeding promotion in maternity hospitals to separate true infant benefits from maternal background confounders.

Period of PURPLE Crying

An educational intervention designed to inform parents that infant crying peaks naturally at 5–6 weeks, helping prevent abusive head trauma.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

The sudden, unexplained death of an otherwise healthy infant during sleep, peaking between 2 and 4 months of age.

Cephalocaudal principle

The pattern of physical growth and motor development that proceeds from head down to tail.

Proximodistal principle

The direction of physical growth and motor control moving from the center of the body outward toward the extremities.

Synaptic overproduction (exuberance)

The rapid proliferation of synaptic connections built by the developing brain during infancy.

Synaptic pruning

The selective elimination of unused or under-stimulated neural synapses to streamline brain efficiency.

Experience-expectant development

Brain wiring process that depends on basic environmental inputs that every typical human environment provides within critical time windows.

Experience-dependent development

Brain growth that occurs in response to individualized, unique learning experiences throughout life without strict deadlines.

Bucharest Early Intervention Project

A randomized controlled trial assigning institutionalized infants to high-quality foster care versus standard institutional care, highlighting the impacts of early severe deprivation.

Visual cliff

An experimental setup using a glass surface over a deep drop-off to test depth perception in crawling infants.

Assimilation

The cognitive process of fitting new information or experiences directly into an existing mental schema.

Accommodation

The cognitive process of altering existing schemas or creating new ones to adapt to novel information.

Object permanence

The understanding that objects and people continue to exist even when they are no longer visible or perceptible.

A-not-B error

An infant's mistake of searching for a hidden object in the place where it was previously found (A) rather than where it was last seen hidden (B).

Habituation

A decline in an infant's responsiveness or attention to a stimulus after repeated presentations.

Dishabituation

The restoration or renewal of an infant's attention when a novel stimulus is introduced.

Baillargeon's violation-of-expectation

A research paradigm demonstrating early infant object permanence by showing that infants look longer at physically impossible events than possible events.

Holophrase

A single word used by an infant to express an entire complex thought or sentence.

Perceptual narrowing

The developmental loss of the ability to distinguish non-native speech sounds over the first year of life as the brain specializes in native language sounds.

Goodness of fit

The degree of compatibility between a child's inherent temperament and the expectations, environment, and demands of their caregivers.

Differential susceptibility

The model proposing that highly reactive children suffer more in adverse environments but thrive more than non-reactive children in highly supportive environments.

Social referencing

The infant behavior of observing a primary caregiver's facial expressions to determine how to react to ambiguous situations.

Tronick's still-face

An experimental procedure where a parent presents an unresponsive, blank expression to an infant, demonstrating infant distress and attempts at interactive repair.

Strange Situation

An observational lab procedure created by Mary Ainsworth involving brief separations and reunions to assess infant-caregiver attachment quality.

Disorganized attachment

An insecure attachment classification where the infant exhibits confused, frozen, or contradictory behaviors due to viewing the caregiver as both a source of fear and safety.